As a chef, a restaurant owner, and honorary
president of the Hungarian delegates to Bocuse
d’Or, Chef Biró Lajos has taken a journey of 40
years to become who he is today. It started in Baks,
a small village in southern Hungary, where as a
small boy he’d often see the owner of the village
restaurant standing at the door, dressed elegantly
in his suit and tie, playing with coins in a pocket.
And so, off he went in search of his own fortune in
the restaurant business.truffled tarhonya with dill & paprika sauce
A
fter graduating from hospitality school and
working in a hotel for a few years, Chef Biro
Lajos got admitted into the embassy of the United
States in Budapest in 1976. “In those days, America
and China were making friendship for the first time,
politically,” says Chef Lajos. While the chef from
the Chinese embassy in Budapest was learning
Hungarian cooking from Chef Lajos, Chef Lajos was
learning oriental cooking from the Chinese chef.
“Actually, even before meeting the Chinese chef,
Chinese cuisine had always been my first love,”
says Chef Lajos. Aside from Sichuan peppers, his
favourite Chinese ingredients include pork belly
and lard, which have a similarity to the Hungarian
kitchen, which uses pork fat as well. In 1981, he
spent two months in Beijing and Shanghai, and two
weeks in North Korea, trying all sorts of exotic food,
such as dog meat, snake soup, and goose intestines.063CHEF
(^) +
VISIT
I subscripe to seven or eight
magazines like Cuisine & Wine Asia.
Each year, I spend about €3,000
to €4,000 on magazines and
books related to food. They make
me think, “How can I be better?”
Bíró Lajos
“I like unusual things, that give me inspiration for
my dishes,” explains Chef Lajos, chuckling. “I want
my food to make people wonder, ‘Where the hell
did this come from?’” When he returned, he spent
seven years at a Chinese restaurant in Kisújszállás,
using steaming and stir-fry techniques, as well as
native cooking techniques for dishes such as pork
cheek stew with sesame oil and soy sauce, or
Sichuan-style soft-shell crab.
filet mignon Wellington with black bird leg